The present invention relates to the rule-based modeling of policy, and the use of modeled policy to analyze operational results.
Operational results are the outputs produced by business processes (e.g., bills produced by a billing process; payments produced by a claims process; reports produced by a financial reporting process). In performing processes, people and systems transform inputs into operational results.
Processes are generally governed by business policies that define the set of rules used to transform inputs into operational results. Policies can derive from many sources, including management (e.g., best practices), trading partners (e.g., contracts and service level agreements), and regulatory bodies (e.g., statutes). Adherence to policy is necessary to ensure optimal business outcomes and/or to comply with contract or law.
Organizations sometimes have trouble clearly defining and enforcing policy, and thus are subject to suboptimal operational results and/or risk of non-compliance. In addition, organizations face the challenge of changing policies and understanding the impact of policy change. This includes the need to keep existing policies current as well as to continuously design new, better policies.